


the metronome of days

by darcylindbergh, doorwaytoparadise



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bastard Angels Dancing Badly With Good Demons, Body Swap Consequences: the Shenanigans Edition, Communicating by Taking Someone's Pulse is Not Effective Communication, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Armageddon, Why Ask When You Can Hijink? and Other Questions by Aziraphale, with art!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25340650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/doorwaytoparadise/pseuds/doorwaytoparadise
Summary: Crowley had a heartbeat.It wasn't the most peculiar thing about the demon, but it certainlywaspeculiar.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 492
Kudos: 819
Collections: Best Aziraphale and Crowley, Good Omens (Complete works), Good Omens Mini Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to my incredibly collection of betas on this piece, antikate, redfacesmiley, ladymacphisto, and, in honour of our time-worn friendship that crosses even fandom borders, hudders-and-hiddles. 
> 
> I had the absolute pleasure of working with Claire doorwaytoparadise for the Mini Bang event, who did all the incredible art throughout this piece as well as a playlist to get you all in the heart-thumping mood. Thank you Claire for all your amazing work! 
> 
> [the metronome of days playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6cG6J3mKmkLdl42vnCpVu8?si=XTsXTgLOS6yR0esFXrt99g)

It was the first sunset of the rest of their lives, and it was beautiful.

The bookshop wasn’t the tallest building in Soho, not by a long shot, but everything in the world was eager to please, just then, and the view from the rooftop stretched for miles. London was drenched in peach and pink, the honeyed light dipping and pooling along the broad avenues and twisting alleys, gilding every tranquil tract of green space and every towering glass and steel construction.

It was a maze of chaos and wonder, of imagination and momentum and creation and life, rushing forward and onward into a great wide-open unknowable future: this place they called _home._

__

“Top off?” Crowley asked, holding up a bottle of champagne.

Aziraphale grinned. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Their fingers brushed together as he passed his glass, and Aziraphale’s smile, trying so hard to remain easy and relaxed, suddenly felt plastered on.

They’d each had a dozen top-offs already; there was no reason not to. There was no reason not to enjoy the moment to the full, to savour it completely: sitting together with their legs hanging off the edge of the roof, the crisp bite of the champagne, the gold-soaked view—and Crowley himself, comforting in the long black-and-scarlet spill of him, in the vetiver-and-brimstone scent and the cocked-hip-loose-spine swagger of him. In the familiarity and the easiness of him.

Aziraphale couldn’t have done any of this without Crowley.

He wouldn’t have wanted to, without Crowley.

There’d been a moment that morning when Aziraphale had thought he might never see Crowley again, and he’d already known how much he _needed_ him, but it was still a shock to realise it in that moment. Watching Crowley dragged away by impassive angels, half-frantic behind Aziraphale’s own blue eyes, second-guessing every plan and decision they’d made, wanting to shout out after him, _no_ , and _wait_ , and _I love—_

But he hadn’t, and not only because Hell had been there to collect their own pound of flesh. He hadn’t because he had been determined: those were not going to be _last words_. Not after all that time.

 _Come back to me,_ Aziraphale had thought instead, as pain sank its claw into his head and the world faded to black. _Come back, and I’ll say them._

Crowley did come back, but Aziraphale hadn’t said them yet.

He’d come back, but he hadn’t come back _the same._

Of course, Crowley _seemed_ fine. He seemed cool and collected and a little bit ridiculous, just like always, and he’d laughed and taken Aziraphale to lunch, let him order whatever he liked off the dessert menu while he slouched in his chair, just like always. He’d driven Aziraphale back to the bookshop and loitered by the door, watched as Aziraphale touched his shelves, his books, quiet and patient; he’d summoned up a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and hustled Aziraphale up to the roof, cleared the clouds from the sky and patted the space of the ledge next to him, and seemed just as he’d always been.

Maybe that’s what was so worrisome about it.

“Madame Tracey sends her love,” Crowley said, interrupting Aziraphale’s anxiety with a rather extravagant frown. “Not sure how she got this number.”

Well, it wasn’t like she could text _Aziraphale_ , now was it? And one did like to keep in touch. He hummed noncommittally. “Lovely girl, she was.”

“Was she?” Crowley sounded as if he didn’t care, but he typed out a rather long reply. “She’s apparently planning to go off with Shadwell, if you can believe that.”

“Sergeant Shadwell is—” Aziraphale tried to bring himself to say _charming_ and couldn’t quite manage it. “Well, she’s very fond of him, at any rate.”

“Right, the angel bit. You can feel that sort of thing.”

“Well, sort of, but this time I was actually _in_ her mind, you know. Bit different.”

Crowley snorted. “What was that like? Being in a human’s mind? Crowded, I bet.”

It had been very practical, actually, for a woman who dealt in fantasy and occultism. She’d taken to being possessed with remarkable aplomb, as if being able to meet the extraordinary with little fuss and a lot of pragmatism was a point of pride, and in the end she’d had more strength in her than he ever could have expected—a human woman, wresting control from the Angel of the Eastern Gate, a _Principality of God_ , in order to protect a child.

It had been absolutely nothing like possessing Crowley.

Possessing Madame Tracey had felt like an invasion; possessing Crowley had felt like going back to a place he already knew.

“Suppose it was like possessing anyone,” Aziraphale finally settled on, taking a long sip of his champagne. The sun started to disappear behind the skyline, its great belly dipping out of sight. “Bit of a push and pull, but we got there in the end.”

“Mm. Never really been my thing, possession. Seems—sticky.” Crowley shuddered.

“Really? Thought that was part and parcel for your sort. All the eye things and the spinning heads and the—” he sniffed delicately— “Pea soup, and so on.”

Crowley barked a laugh. “That’s _The Exorcist_ , angel. Hollywood stuff. No, it’s usually basic tempt-a-priest level stuff. Kids’ games, practically. Not my style.”

“You possessed _me_ ,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“S’not the same. You weren’t in you when I was possessing you.”

Aziraphale looked over at Crowley’s gold-and-fire profile, his eyes still hidden behind dark lenses. He was still so very like himself, so very like he always was, but the curl of worry inside Aziraphale’s stomach pulled taut every time their fingers brushed together, wire-thin and aching.

“Was it what you expected?” he asked, as casually as possible. “Possessing me?”

“Can’t say I ever thought about it.” Crowley said off-handedly, pulling a dramatically distasteful face. “Oh, golly gee, wonder what it’s like to be an angel—not exactly the stuff of demonic daydreams, you know?”

Aziraphale flushed. “Of course not.”

“Had you thought about it? Possessing a demon?”

“Well, I _had_ just possessed a human.”

“And? What did you think?”

He’d thought a lot of things, and none of them were things he wanted to talk about. “It wasn’t anything like possessing a human,” Aziraphale finally hedged, “but I thought it counted for something. Counted for everything, I should think.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, looking over again, a smile tilting at the corner of his mouth. “I guess it did.”

Somewhere down below, faint and faraway, Aziraphale caught the first notes of a song—a slow warbling voice and a soft piano that rose into a heady declaration, backed by the crash of guitars and drums together. Music was common enough in Soho, but this song grew and grew, another strain joining in and then another, all the shops playing it through their open doors, all the patio speakers and boomboxes and tinny radios following the lead.

“Is that you?” Aziraphale asked, leaning over precariously to look down into the streets. “It sounds like your bloke, doesn’t it?”

“It’s the _car’s_ bloke.” Crowley hauled Aziraphale back firmly onto the rooftop, fingers warm around his collar. “I don’t have anything to do with it.”

“Awfully unusual for the _Bentley_ to start miracling music around London.”

“So take it up with her. No one ever listens to a thing I say anyway.”

Pink tinged Crowley’s cheeks, though, and the song below rang out, joyful and celebratory, a victory and a triumph and not an ounce of humility in sight. _I consider it a challenge before the whole human race,_ the singer declared, _and we ain’t gonna lose._

“Quite right, my dear,” Aziraphale said, smiling despite himself. “Not a single word.”

“Shaddup,” Crowley drawled, all exaggeration and dismissal and secret glee, and it wasn’t fair that he should look the same, smile the same, laugh the same as he always had, full-throated and open-mouthed, a little too exposed, a little too unhesitating; it wasn’t fair that he should be as arrogant as ever, as patient as ever, too-cool in that concerned way of his, shot through with tenderness and curiosity and tiny offerings that belied some quieter, more ancient uncertainty.

It wasn’t fair that Aziraphale couldn’t rely on all that sameness, all that bone-deep familiarity, because possessing Crowley _hadn’t_ been what Aziraphale had expected. It hadn’t been what Aziraphale had expected at all.

There had been something wrong.

Something wrong with Crowley’s heart.

*

 _One_ , and they’d looked at each other from across Crowley’s conservatory, Aziraphale’s stomach trying to creep up his spine, and it had been dangerous and daunting and the only choice they’d really had and—

 _Two_ , and they’d put out their hands, finding each other in the green-hued dark, and Aziraphale had felt that palm against his like a thunderclap, a promise even, of everything they had to lose and everything they might have to protect and—

 _Three_ , and they’d blinked and they’d _pushed_ , flowing in and flowing out, brushing past one another in a flurry of sparks, sound and colour rushing in, rushing past and—

Opening his eyes to find his own looking back at him clenching long, thin fingers around a soft, thick hand, and for a moment it had been a cacophony, it had been drumfire, a cannonade, crashing in his ears like the surges of the ocean, ringing in his chest, reverberating through him like the peal of a bell, _calling_ —

It was a sound Aziraphale knew better than any sound in the universe.

And then it had fallen silent.

*

Crowley had a heartbeat.

It wasn’t the most peculiar thing about the demon, but it certainly _was_ peculiar.

Hearts, generally speaking, were an entirely human matter—the centre of life that She shocked into those bodies, the mechanical whirring gears of Her inventions. Aziraphale, charged with their protection, had always been attuned to those rhythms; he needed barely more than a brush of skin against skin to hear a pulse, the beats amplified in electrical currents along his senses.

Crowley had always had one.

Aziraphale had heard it the first time in Mesopotamia, thundering through his littlest finger when Crowley’s hand accidentally settled too close to his on the railing of the Ark. Aziraphale had jolted in surprise, but it had been comforting, too—the steadiness, the endlessness of it, the reminder of life persisting as they watched death rising around them. He’d heard it in Golgotha on the way back from the fields, hands brushing against each other’s with something like intention, like defiance; he’d heard it in Rome, their wrists crossing as they reached across the table for oysters and olives and cup after cup of wine, flirting with the risk and thinking up excuses for if they got caught.

He’d heard it when they’d shook hands for the first time, agreeing to an Arrangement under the leaky eaves of Kent, stepping ever so slightly closer to one another, and he’d heard it when they’d held hands for what should have been the last time on a tarmac at the end of the world, standing once and for all _together_.

Aziraphale had always listened for Crowley’s heartbeat, because Aziraphale didn’t usually have one.

Angels didn’t, as a rule. It wasn’t standard. Corporations were tools more than anything, worn rather than inhabited. Aziraphale lacked the natural electricity that made human hearts beat so ceaselessly; his own hadn’t beat at all for the first several thousand years. He hadn’t even known it _could_ until, quite suddenly, in the middle of a maximum-capacity crowd at the Globe Theatre in 1601, he’d looked up and caught Crowley’s eye across the stalls.

His heart had started like he’d been kicked in the chest, awkward and out-of-rhythm, and it had beat heavily beneath his ribs all that night before he figured out how to make it stop, two days later.

Turning it off had left him feeling hollow, scooped out, as if he had never realised the stillness of himself before.

It was a funny thing, his heart. Unreliable, unexpected. It could be set off by the strangest of things—an ancient first-edition left abandoned at his register, smelling faintly of brimstone; a cup of cocoa suddenly growing warm again as though freshly made, turning the ceramic briefly but hellishly hot; a free table at the Clos Maggiore and unexpected tickets to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s sold-out show on a Saturday night—but every time, he savoured the feeling in his chest, every second he dared.

He didn’t dare very long.

It was the epitome of frivolous miracles. Something that happened only on accident, only for himself, entirely without purpose. There was no knowing when Heaven might be watching.

He’d made doubly sure to shut it off before trading bodies with Crowley. Crowley would be expecting silence in his chest; he’d been an angel once, after all. He knew.

But Crowley’s heart was standard, the way a human’s was. Crowley’s beat always. Crowley’s heart had long since been the metronome of Aziraphale’s days, counting out the hours, the minutes; his heart had been the pocket-watch, kept in another chest and just out of reach, piling up the seconds they spent together like sea glass or pearls.

Or at least, it had been.

When Aziraphale had opened his eyes in Crowley’s body, Crowley’s heart had stuttered, and slowed, and stopped.

 _Stopped_ , as if that shouldn’t have shattered the universe, as if it shouldn’t have announced the end of all things. _Stopped,_ as if the planets themselves could stop, as if the tides could stop.

Aziraphale had put his hand to Crowley’s wiry chest and waited, but it had not started and not started and he’d carried that heart with him, a still and silent anchor beneath his breastbone, weighing him down through Hell’s halls.

 _I’ll come back to you_ , he’d thought, one step after the other. _And it’ll come back to beating._

But it hadn’t.

Was there something about ethereal entities that simply stopped hearts from working? Incompatible energies, a boundless-thing-suddenly-in-a-bounded space, that sort of thing? An angelic being suddenly occupying demonic-crafted territory, burning away at its bare essentials?

Had he _broken_ Crowley’s heart?

The thought horrified him. Crowley’s heart had been his steadfast companion these long years, reliable as the demon it belonged to. It would be the loss of a lifetime—of several lifetimes, of an _eternity_ —if it really was gone.

*

The brilliant light of the sunset slowly faded over Soho, and the stars blinked into light, shining in their endless millions.

Around half-midnight all of Greater London suffered a miraculously specific power outage that only affected light bulbs. The city fell dark, and then it fell silent, and then there was a murmur as faces appeared in windows and stopped on street corners, looking up toward the northern horizon where blues and greens and violets danced across the night sky.

“That you, angel?” Crowley asked, smiling like he meant to be smirking but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Don’t know what you mean,” Aziraphale said innocently, and then, quite carefully, he added, “You always did like the sky though, didn’t you?”

Crowley’s smile froze, his dark lenses a wash of magnetic light, and Aziraphale could read what he was thinking about in the lines of his face. About bandstands, and about betrayals— _we can go off together. Alpha Centauri. When I’m off in the stars, I won’t—_

“Humans spend an awful lot of time trying to get up there, and look down at it,” Aziraphale offered quietly, “but I think I rather prefer the view from Earth. From right here.”

_From right next to you._

Aziraphale wondered what hearts did, between beats. Wondered if the beat of one heart could restart another. Just then, he thought his heart was beating so hard it could have restarted the universe.

“Yeah,” Crowley finally answered. “I think I do too.”

The power outage didn’t last long. Half an hour. The lights of the city flickered back on, headlights and streetlamps, lamps and fluorescent tubes, little displays on microwaves and card readers. The faces disappeared from windows, started to move again along the pavements.

Life on Earth began, once more, to move forward.

Crowley and Aziraphale meandered their way inside eventually, leaving their champagne glasses in the sink, the bottles they’d emptied lined up on the worktop. They were only half-tipsy as they made their way down the spiral stairs; they were entirely sober by the time they reached the shop floor.

“I’d best be getting along too,” Crowley said, stretching, and Aziraphale couldn’t think of a good enough reason for him to stay.

He followed Crowley to the front door, fingers clasped around each other. “I suppose I’ll see you—sometime this week?”

“’Course,” Crowley answered, and then he reached out and put a hand over one of Aziraphale’s, as though he hardly thought a thing of it, as though he’d done it a thousand times before instead of only three. “Call me if you need anything, yeah?”

And then he was off, jogging down the steps and disappearing into the Bentley. He didn’t look back, but Aziraphale watched him go.

His hand had been warm against Aziraphale’s.

There had been a pulse in it.

Relief flooded through Aziraphale like dark waters, tinged with vinegar. Crowley’s heart was beating once more, risen again from that horrible stillness—but Crowley hadn’t reacted to it at all. Hadn’t seemed to sense that terrible silent weight; hadn’t seemed to notice when his heart kickstarted in his chest and started working.

Crowley’s heartbeat had been the constant in Aziraphale’s days for six thousand years, as fixed and steadfast as the dawn. When the rains and the plague and the wars and the starvation had ravaged the world, it had been there. When humans redesigned their very reality in everything from landscapes and fashion and technology all the way down to the conception of _time itself,_ it had been there.

When Aziraphale had stood at the edge of the Earth’s final moments, the Great Plan shattered on the tarmac, burning up his faith in Heaven for the mere _possibility_ of something bigger and greater than sheer destruction, it had been there.

And then it had been _gone._

Aziraphale had laid his trust in Crowley’s very skin, and today, for the first time in six thousand years, he’d stood alone.

Crowley’s pulse may have been back now, but its foundations felt suddenly treacherous, its solidity crumbling like an ancient ruin into the sea. There was no telling how long it might last.

Aziraphale would do anything to protect that heart, and the demon that carried it.

He would simply have to make sure it kept beating.


	2. Chapter 2

In the beginning, Aziraphale didn’t think about touching.

The world had been such a huge, endless space, and humans had been so _small_ in the vastness of it. It had been easy to keep his distance from them, even as he followed behind them, out of the desert and along the fertile banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. It had been easy to watch them as they learned to navigate this new earth, to stand separated and apart, to avoid their food and their shelter and their laughter.

To hold himself as cold and faraway as She seemed to hold Herself.

To bear witness.

But humans _lived_ off touch, thrived off it, suffered without it: their skin would go hungry and their eyes would go wide, watching the distances between themselves and someone else, trying to figure out how to close the space. Since Eve had first bloomed from Adam’s rib, from the protective shield above the heart of him, humans had been finding ways to connect with one another.

It was a thousand years before Crowley first touched Aziraphale.

Aziraphale can remember every time they’ve touched since.

(The soft brushes and momentary glances, the slipping-by of stepping in or stepping out, the _after-yous_ of polite society. Knocked elbows, bumped shoulders, walking side-by-side down streets and pavements and secluded alleys. The passing of glasses and bottles of wines; gifts given with a _best not to mention it;_ the return of near-lost property. So many more and yet so very few, and that first time, that very first time, standing on the Ark as the waters rose, littlest fingers pressed together in the littlest touch.)

Aziraphale thought about all those there-and-gone-again touches and wondered, sometimes, if his own skin didn’t starve simply because he didn’t know what it meant to be sated.

But this wasn’t about him. This was about Crowley, and whether he was all right, and Aziraphale needed more than a brush of seconds to know for sure.

_Does your heart still beat? Or are you broken?_

He watched the humans moving around each other on Soho’s busy streets, thinking about how they managed it. About how they leaned in and out of each other’s orbits so instinctively, so thoughtlessly. Celestial bodies swinging in toward one another in an inevitable gravitational pull before swinging away again, as if there were some unseen centrifugal force keeping them on their paths.

They made it look easy.

By the end of the first week of the rest of their lives, Aziraphale knew one thing: it wasn’t easy.

There were so many ways human beings touched each other, and none of them came naturally to Aziraphale. Even when Crowley was there—and he wasn’t, always, as prone to disappearing off now as he’d always been—he still seemed so far away.

“You all right?” Crowley asked the following Saturday, absently glaring ice cream scoops off teenagers’ cones in St James as they wandered down by the water. Aziraphale shot him an exasperated look, but he’d already blessed unexpected change into the teens’ pockets for replacements.

“Fine,” he answered.

“Seem a bit distracted this week, is all. Lots of big changes to be all right with.” _It’d be all_ _right if you weren’t_ , he didn’t say, but Aziraphale heard it in the quirk of his eyebrow, in the length of his glance.

Aziraphale summoned a marginally more genuine smile, and thought about the distance between his hand and Crowley’s, about how simple Crowley had made it look, to reach out and press their hands together. Crowley’s hand hung by his side now, as if waiting, as if daring Aziraphale to try it for himself.

He didn’t.

“I’m fine,” he said again, trying to mean it properly, and Crowley watched him a moment, but let it go. They spent the rest of the afternoon watching kids chase each other over the lawns and debating good-naturedly about literature no one read anymore and politicians no one remembered, laughing at jokes more than four thousand years old.

 _I’m fine_ , Aziraphale said, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask, _are you?_

*

So touch didn’t necessarily come naturally to Aziraphale; that was fine. All it meant was that he needed a plan.

Aziraphale liked plans. He liked scripts, knowing what to say and when to say it, knowing when to enter and when to exit. He liked read-throughs and rehearsals and dress rehearsals, stage directions, turn-now and stand-here and project-voices and stay-calm, the preparedness of it, the solidity growing beneath his feet when he remembered the next line and the next movement again and again and again. He liked the comfort of planning out all the dialogue, imagining all the possible responses, all the possible reactions branching out from one another.

_If_ _I say this, he’ll say that—_

_If I say this, will he know not to leave?_

Recent failures of the apocalyptic nature aside, Aziraphale was quite good at plans, and he was quite good at plans because he was, like most isolated, self-indulgent academics who liked the general population of London better in theory than in close-contact practice, quite good at research.

He’d started with medical texts about hearts, which seemed the most reasonable options but also the most boring, and quickly moved away from learning the actual mechanics—which even humans didn’t seem to have figured out, bless them—to the real crux of the issue, which was how to connect with Crowley skin-to-skin for whatever period of time it might take to be reasonably assured that his heart still beat in his chest.

Humans had a lot to say about touch in general, but it had taken Aziraphale a day or so to find the real cache of knowledge: fiction.

He should’ve known, honestly. Humans always tended to say all the most important things in fiction.

This particular plan had sprouted, deliciously, from a comforting re-read of Georgette Heyer and the dramatic collapse of an overwhelmed protagonist, right into the would-be lover’s arms in the third act. Now Aziraphale was not, himself, a fair overwhelmed maiden, and Crowley was no would-be lover, but after a brief review of literature both classic and modern—from _Sense and_ _Sensibility_ to _Rebecca_ , from _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ to _Superman_ and, one particularly confusing night spent with a pint of mango gelato, the sort of ostentatiously-coloured drinks that are usually served with little umbrellas, and the entire romantic comedy ouvre of the 1990s—he determined that it would serve his purposes.

He didn’t need anything over the top, after all, and while some options would simply be awkward—the stretch and yawn, _goodness_ —Aziraphale was sure this one would work quite brilliantly, and appeal to Crowley besides.

Not that Crowley needed to know anything about it, of course. Just a quick count of Crowley’s pulse and Aziraphale would be off.

No fuss to it at all.

*

Once one has a plan, all one needs then is an _opportunity_ , and Aziraphale knew at once when he’d found it: dinner, with Crowley, at a restaurant tucked into the shell of a desanctified church out in Spitalfields, with a modern trap of a staircase built into the apse.

Crowley had grinned the smuggest grin anyone had seen this side of the Atlantic in twenty years as he sauntered through the doors, and even Aziraphale had to admit that the symbology of their reserved table, stationed up that staircase on a floating glass and steel addition somewhere between the dark-raftered ceiling and the swept-stone floor, the starry night outside pouring in through the huge walls of windows, was probably about as good as it got.

“You’re _sure_ it’s all right?” he’d asked Crowley a hundred times, as the host showed them to their table, as the waiter came with the menus, as a sommelier made her recommendations. The soft lighting of the wrought-iron chandeliers and votive candles on the tables was almost too much to bear. “I won’t have you burnt again for the sake of a pressed terrine.”

Though the pressed terrine _did_ look rather good.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Crowley had reassured him. “Barely even a tickle when we were downstairs, angel, and nothing up here at all. Are you thinking the terrine, then? Or the scallops?”

He did end up with the scallops, though he was so nervous he tragically couldn’t quite appreciate the smoked ventrèche bacon. Then there was lamb for the main, with the most beautiful tomato jam that also went unadored, and Aziraphale didn’t even remember to ask for a bite of Crowley’s risotto, too busy imagining he could see the pulse in Crowley’s throat, behind his smile—so close, and yet out of reach.

Aziraphale’s own heart was pounding so loudly in his chest it was a wonder Crowley didn’t seem to notice. He tried to gain control of it, telling himself sternly that Crowley had never once resisted the chance to be a dashing rescuer as long as no one accused him of it out loud, but he couldn’t quite stop imagining all the ways the plan could go wrong, and off his heart went, again and again, bounding wild and uncontrollable in his chest, making his cheeks flush and his hands damp around his silverware.

What if Crowley didn’t see him until it was too late? What if Crowley didn’t reach for him?

“Dessert?” Crowley offered, seemingly oblivious to Aziraphale’s distress. “ _Selection of farmhouse_ _cheeses_ is always a good bet, but this Valrhona chocolate has been awfully popular on the menus lately. Although—” here he grinned, wicked and delectable— “the apple tarte tatin would certainly be the feather in the wing of this night, don’t you think?”

What if he just— _fell_ , a mess of banged-up bones and bruised pride on the stone of the old church floor? Sprawled out where the altar used to be, while Crowley reminisced about other churches and other, more graceful saves, inspecting his fingernails as he waited for Aziraphale to pick himself up? What if Heaven could watch, even in this desanctified, modernised, Michelin-starred church, and laughed themselves sick over the show?

What if _God_ did?

Nonsense. Utter nonsense. All the literature agreed, and every film, and a large number of web-based amateur writing groups as well. The scripts were clear and direct, and Crowley had cast himself in the role of debonair gentleman as far back as 1793. It would be fine, and Aziraphale would get the chance he’d been waiting for.

“I don’t think I’m up for dessert tonight, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, which was dreadful, as chocolate pave truly was one of his favourites and Galvin La Chappelle served it with a dollop of strawberry Eton mess, which sounded _delightful_ , but there was nothing for it. He couldn’t stomach another bite; he just wanted to get this over with.

Across the table, Crowley raised an eyebrow. Aziraphale’s heart went _ba-bump, ba-bump._ “You sure, angel?”

“Quite. Let’s—coffee? Back at the shop?”

“Sure, ‘course. Whatever you like.”

 _Ba-bump, ba-bump_.

Crowley took care of the cheque in his usual hand-waving manner, and Aziraphale followed him back to the glass and steel staircase, his heart lurching in his chest. _Ba-bump, ba-bump._ Crowley went down before him, one hand trailing lightly on the metal bannister, descending to the grounds. Aziraphale held his breath, _ba-bump, ba-bump_ , as he stepped off the last glass step, but Crowley didn’t react, didn’t jump up in startlement, didn’t seem to feel the leftover aura of consecration that lingered in between the stone slabs.

Aziraphale went down after him. _Ba-bump, ba-bump_. There were twenty steps; the staircase was long. _Ba-bump, ba-bump._ He took his hand off the bannister too early, took the last few steps at something almost resembling a jog, _ba-bump,_ _ba-bump._ That would never do, that racket, and he pressed a hand to his chest to stop his own unnecessary heart as he reached the bottom stair and then—

He let his foot drift too far forward, and miss the step entirely.

Gravity took over and Aziraphale succumbed to it, let his knees give way, let his feet slip out from under him, and he fell, sudden and sharp, twisting automatically to look up at the dark vaulted rafters, and it happened so much faster than he’d thought; his mouth opened, giving a surprised cry even though he expected it, even though he planned it, like an idiot; he threw out a hand blindly, reaching out for the hand he hoped wouldn’t let him down and _then_ —

Crowley caught him.

He was stronger than he looked, Crowley was, and faster, too. He caught Aziraphale with one hand around Azirphale’s waist and the other at his neck, quick as anything, and Aziraphale clung to him before he could even think about it, throwing his arms around Crowley’s shoulders and hanging on.

The skin on the back of Crowley’s neck was tender, and soft, and silent.

Crowley held him there a moment, grinning again, sly and dark and temptation himself. “Bit too much to drink, angel?”

The restaurant was still bustling around them; no one seemed to have noticed Aziraphale’s slip. Glasses clinked at the bar and pots clanged in the kitchens; a table close by erupted in laughter, too loud in the echoing church nave.

The hand that cradled Aziraphale’s head was cool, and steady, and silent.

The seconds ticked by, and every inch of Crowley’s skin pressed tight to Aziraphale’s, holding him safely in place, was horribly, terrifyingly _silent_.

“Must be,” Aziraphale said, with a weak, sick laugh. “Lucky you were so quick.”

Crowley tipped him slowly back upright, hanging onto his waist a moment to make sure he had his feet beneath him; Aziraphale fussed with his waistcoat, his jacket, his bow-tie, to escape Crowley’s gaze. He could feel his own heart straining his chest again, straining against that wretched, aching quiet, longing to fill void with something, _anything_ , because Crowley’s heart was _silent_ and it felt like a crown of thorns pulling tight under Aziraphale’s ribs.

He swallowed. He clenched his fists. He smothered his heart back into submission and pasted on a smile. “Shall we?”

Crowley gave him an odd, lingering look from behind his sunglasses. “You sure you’re all right?”

Aziraphale took a deep breath, fortified himself. “I will be.”

*

They did go back to the bookshop, where Crowley, for the lack of a better term, hovered. He settling Aziraphale into his chair with a lap blanket, snapped up mugs of coffee and little biscuits into Aziraphale’s hands, miracled an old movie onto the telly when nothing looked good on the BBC. He didn’t touch Aziraphale again.

Aziraphale watched, feeling half-drunk, as Crowley straightened up a bookshelf absent-mindedly and sprawled, with his usual graceful show at lacking grace, into his usual spot on the sofa. Wondered at how normal he still seemed, how unchanged; wondered at the rhythms of him, still so steady and consistent even with the beat of his heart standing fixed: an eternal pendulum, stopped dead.

Eventually Crowley ran out of reasons to linger, and this time, Aziraphale didn’t give him one. He dropped the dirty mugs into the sink, cleared away the last of the shortbread crumbs, and went home.

Aziraphale sat for a long time in the quiet aftermath, thinking.

If Crowley’s heart wasn’t beating, maybe it needed to be startled into restarting.

He was going to need a new plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Galvin La Chappelle](https://galvinrestaurants.com/restaurant/galvin-la-chapelle-the-city-michelin-star/) is a real restaurant in London, and once I saw the pictures, I could not resist.


	3. Chapter 3

It was one thing, Aziraphale thought, and a complicated enough one, to simply feel a heartbeat. But it was quite another to start one.

He spent a few days rifling through his books again, looking for clues and feeling overwhelmed. The medical texts were, once again, rather useless; Aziraphale couldn’t exactly cart a hissing demon into the local A&E and commandeer a defibrillator, now could he, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation would be awfully suspicious to a completely conscious patient, not to mention awkward to introduce. _Oh, dear boy, if you wouldn’t mind just laying back a moment—_

Maybe he ought to just give Crowley a good knock on the head and have done with it.

Then again, that didn’t seem _less_ awkward to explain, so maybe not.

Aziraphale wished his own heart were more consistent, easier to predict. It might have provided a starting point at least, but no: his heart started at the silliest notions, at glasses of wine and documentaries about gorillas and reservations at new restaurants, and never with any regularity.

Crowley, though—his heart would be different. He indulged Aziraphale with the wine and the documentaries and the restaurants, of course, but his heart beat at a faster rhythm than Aziraphale’s ever would, with all the immediacy of technology and the swiftness of changing trends and the wind in his hair going ninety miles an hour down whichever road he pleased. Crowley was fast, and daring, and downright _cool_ , and his heart probably needed something fast and daring and downright cool to suit.

 _Frankenstein_ was no more helpful than any of the medical texts, though Aziraphale did make a note of it should he and Crowley ever get caught in a downpour. _Robinson Crusoe_ seemed suitably adventurous, but Crowley loved modern convenience, hated having to do anything the hard way, and preferred his natural surroundings to come in carefully curated pots and planters. _Lord of the Rings_ was out, on account of being too fantastical; _The Turn of the Screw_ was set aside, on account of being too vaguely spectral; _The Haunting of Hill House_ was passed over, on account of potentially giving Crowley too many damned ideas.

And then Aziraphale spotted it.

He didn’t even remember buying it, although he must have done. Perhaps it had come in one of those bulk-buy boxes he occasionally got off estate sales, buried beneath other treasures, shelved here in the dustiest, cobwebiest corner to be forgotten.

It was a funny odd cover, he thought, tipping the book off the shelf and looking it over: a grey field with nine pink hearts, arranged to look like a playing card, with bright, ostentatious writing. Thematically appropriate, at least. It reminded Aziraphale of smoke and neon, of novelty windscreen transfers just visible over Crowley’s shoulder as Aziraphale’s heart ran roughshod through his chest, his hands shaking and palms sweating and throat constricting as he passed over a thermos filled with unspeakable dangers, with indescribable terrors.

 _Casino Royale_ , the cover of the book read.

A spy thriller, if he remembered quite correctly, with a plot full of clandestine affairs and close calls, suave black suits and money thrown around in the millions. An adrenalin-rush of a page-turner, for those that liked that sort of thing; a little bit bloody and a little bit dark and a big, heaping dose of danger.

 _Yes_ , Aziraphale thought. _That just might do._

_*_

Aziraphale was not, technically speaking, _permitted_ in any of the great casinos of Europe—nor any of the middling ones, nor even most of the outright disreputable ones—due to a particular lucky streak in the early 1990s when funding for certain research initiatives had been a bit thin on the ground, and he thought it best, even eighty years later, to avoid the MI6 as well.

But there was still one bastion of crime open to them in the United Kingdom, one seedy underbelly filled to brimming with thieves and racketeers, with charlatans and sharks, and Aziraphale only needed one anyway: the British Museum.

Crowley liked the British Museum. He’d told Aziraphale once that this was because he liked a good greedy criminal atmosphere, but Aziraphale strongly suspected there was something a little softer underneath all the bravado. An affection for creation, perhaps. For creativity, and invention, and artistry.

Perhaps a bit of kinship, too.

It was a familiar path these days, walking through the galleries, laughing at things they remembered, pointing out things that could have been theirs. It was a game as much as a memory: history lived is a much different perspective than history preserved.

(“Swear it, angel, that was mine! Picked it up in Thebes, no idea when I lost it.”

“You never did, you only wore scarabs back then. Don’t think I don’t remember.”

“Everyone wore scarabs, that doesn’t mean you remember anything properly.”

“I remember _you_.”)

The museum wasn’t busy, or at least it wasn’t in the bubble of rooms surrounding them—school trips having been delayed, tour guides having gotten lost, the machines at the ticket desk all having developed networktivity problems or whatever they were called—and they had reservations later for the afternoon tea at the café. Crowley occupied himself by miracling certain pieces out of their spots, spiriting them away back into storage, just to drive the curators mad over where their tagging systems failed; Aziraphale made up for it by subtly mending cracks in the more delicate pieces, restoring work that would otherwise be too sensitive for human hands.

It had been a while since they’d had the time to really _enjoy_ the museum. The last few years had seen their visits reduced to popping in and out for watercress sandwiches and a quick coffee and cardamom torte, trading observations about Warlock Dowling and their respective sides. It was nice to just meander for a bit; it was nice to have the time to take for it.

It was a shame, then, that Aziraphale was going to ruin it.

He almost didn’t. He almost just kept right on going, passing from Ancient Egypt gallery and into the Halikarnossos gallery without missing a step, without casting so much as a glance at the maintenance cupboard underneath the west stairs. He almost let Crowley slip by him without stopping him, without throwing a hand out across his chest—not quite making contact, not quite yet—without gasping in alarm and fear.

But museums are quiet places, naturally. The hush is built right into the collections; the stillness is enforced with glasses cases, gilt frames, filtered air. The spaces between the artefacts and statuary are filled with contemplation, with awe, with the weight of a gathered history, the lives of emperors and pharaohs, craftsmen and artists—the lives of men, and of gods—all kept encased in amber, crystalline, held up to the light.

Crowley wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Crowley was supposed to be _alive_ , alive and _brilliant_ with it, a _roar_ of blood and brain and muscle, the spaces between his ribs filled up with the rhythm of survival, with the weight of an immortal history still ringing in his bones. Crowley was supposed to be a cacophony, a call and return, a shout in the dark. Crowley was supposed to breath and laugh and tease, to plot and create and explore, and he had always been _deafening_ in the clatter and the commotion of him. Even in his silences—in late nights unspooled over Aziraphale’s sofa, barely hanging onto a glass of wine; in early mornings, watching as humanity slipped helplessly over the horizon, into the sun—Crowley had always been so full of sound.

This place was full of statutes, and Aziraphale would not let Crowley become one of them; this place was a mausoleum, built to remember the dead, and Aziraphale _would not_ let Crowley be laid to rest.

There was no question then, not really. No real choice.

Aziraphale strode ahead, hurrying to turn the corner out of Egypt just a few steps in front of Crowley, and he could feel his own heart responding as he tried to make it convincing, as he tried to make his _fear_ believable, the _ba-bump, ba-bump_ calling up the adrenalin in his blood and the damp to his palms and the flush to his cheeks.

“ _Crowley_ ,” he hissed, as Crowley turned the corner behind him. He threw an arm across Crowley’s chest, feeling his heat through his clothes but not yet that heart, and shot a glance down into the Halikarnossos gallery with wide, alarmed eyes.

Crowley craned his neck to see whatever it was Crowley had seen. “What? What is it?”

“It’s—it’s _Gabriel!”_ Aziraphale made a show of looking around, of spotting the maintenance cupboard, of tossing a miracle in front of them to be sure it would open as he pushed Crowley toward it, his hands firm on Crowley’s ribs, his shoulders, his arms. _Ba-bump, ba-bump._ “Quickly, in here!”

“Gabriel _—what—”_

Crowley stumbled over his feet, reaching back now with his own hands, and Aziraphale twisted to make sure he would get only jacket, only sleeve, _ba-bump, ba-bump,_ and then they wrenched the door to the cupboard open and pulled each other in, slamming the door closed onto the dark.

The cupboard was tiny, thank Someone, barely more than a cubby for emergency cleaning supplies and bin liners, and it was a tight fit for the two of them. Crowley shrank back against the row of shelves but there wasn’t a lot of room to give, and stuffed in close with a mop bucket and a wet floor sign, Aziraphale was close enough that he could _sense_ the outlines of Crowley’s frame, the heave of his chest as he tried to control his breathing, the heat of his body. He smelled like smoke and brimstone, that familiar bit of sour, and Aziraphale’s mouth went dry as he fumbled to stop his own heart once more as they shuffled together, trying to figure out how to fit.

“Just hang on—”

“No, grab onto that and you can slide—”

“Just let me—”

“ _Not that_ , you’ll bring it all down onto us—”

Something out in the corridor banged loudly, and they both froze still Aziraphale had one foot in the mop bucket—thankfully dry—and his hands braced on the shelf behind Crowley’s head, barely more than an inch of space between their noses; Crowley clutched at the edge of Aziraphale’s jacket with thumb and forefinger, as if too hesitant to hold onto him properly. 

Their breath came in fast and heavy, filling the space between them.

“What the bloody Hell is _Gabriel_ doing in the British Museum?” Crowley hissed.

 _Nothing_ , Aziraphale reminded himself, clenching down on his own heart to keep it still. _It’s not real._ _He’s not really there._ A little lie, maybe of an inaccuracy more than anything else—he could have easily seen a tall, dark-haired fellow with a suit tailored to within an inch of its life, and thought he’d seen something he hadn’t. He could have easily caught a glimpse of a winged statute, and thought he’d seen an angel.

Crowley was so close, _so close._ He only needed to bridge that tiny gap, and this would all be worthwhile. He could feel the quick rhythm of Crowley’s breath, getting faster, could see the bob of his throat and the white line of his teeth, growing longer, bared against the panic. He just needed an _inch—_

“Maybe he’s just interested in, I don’t know, ancient Greek marbles?” Crowley’s voice was clearly reaching for reasonable and missing by a mile. “Doesn’t have to be that he’s looking for us.”

“Why would he want to see ancient Greek marbles? He saw them the first go round.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know what constitutes an appropriate angelic holiday these days, maybe it’s all just popping down to revisit the oldies, _hi guys, great stuff, keep it up, too bad we didn’t get a chance to blow it all to smithereens in the Apocalypse last month—”_

Outside the door, a set of shuffling footsteps passed, and Aziraphale acted entirely on instinct: _don’t get caught_.

He snapped a hand over Crowley’s mouth.

Crowley’s pulse _thundered_ through him, so immediate and so forceful that Aziraphale rocked back with the wave of it crashing over him, and for a moment he couldn’t think, couldn’t _breathe_ , the _noise_ of it coursing through him and threatening to take him off his feet, _babumpbabumpbabumpbabump._ Crowley’s mouth was hot against his palm, straining against Aziraphale’s hand as Aziraphale tried to get a bloody grip on himself, the sharp edges of Crowley’s teeth biting into the meat of his hand, _babumpbabumpbabump,_ and then Crowley made another noise, dark in the back of his throat with anxiety, and Aziraphale wanted to hold him there for eternity, to bring out his wings and wrap them together and do the thing he was created to do: to _protect_.

They stood for a long moment, pressed together at hip and sternum and knee, breathing hard against each other, staring at one another in the dark. Minutes passed. Nothing happened.

No one was coming.

This was not eternity, after all, and the threat _wasn’t real._

Slowly, as gently as he could, Aziraphale lifted his hand away, the phantom beat of Crowley’s heart following after it, reverberating down along all his bones, _babumpbabumpbabump, babumpbabumpbabump._

“I think,” Aziraphale finally said, his voice gone thin and thready, “I think—I don’t _feel_ any other angels here.”

Crowley’s eyes were still hidden behind his glasses, entirely lost to the dim shadows of the cupboard, but Aziraphale could feel him looking, for a moment. Then his head tipped back against the shelves, and reality fluttered, a little, as Crowley rifled through it, searching for hints of angel, for whether anyone was looking.

“No,” he croaked, slumping further back into the shelves, breaking the line of connection between them. “No. Whoever it was, they’re gone.”

“Or—” Aziraphale hesitated. “Or I was mistaken.”

The rest of the museum held no joy for them now. Aziraphale reached behind him for the door handle, letting the light flood in. Crowley looked chalk-white under the harsh fluorescent bulbs of the corridor.

“Come on,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s go home.”

*

They did not go home.

Crowley hadn’t said a word as they’d slipped out of the museum and into the late afternoon sun. They’d had reservations for tea, of course, but Aziraphale couldn’t think of eating; he followed Crowley mindlessly back to the Bentley, thinking about what he’d heard.

Crowley’s heart, going wild.

It had been so loud, so fierce, so harried, beating fast like a rabbit’s, out of control and on the verge of exploding in on itself, going supernova inside the hollows of Crowley’s chest.

Aziraphale had thought that this was what he wanted: a pulse, a beat, a rhythm, _anything_ to show that Crowley was all right, that he was as stable and steady as he’d ever been. That he could still be the rock upon which Aziraphale was trying to build a new life for them both.

This wasn’t steady. This was wrong in a different way, but it was just as terrifying.

He’d told Crowley lies before. A hundred times, even, if he’d told one: lies like _we’re not friends_ and _I don’t know him._ He’d told truths that weren’t lies, but that didn’t tell the whole story, like _you go too fast for me,_ cut off at its knees with the end still sitting in his throat— _I’m trying so hard to catch up._ He’d refused, and rejected, and made the sort of statements no one should be forgiven for, but Crowley had still come back, had still taken Aziraphale’s hand at the end of the world, had not turned away.

_We are an angel, and a demon. We’re on opposite sides._

_It’s over._

Crowley could always tell, before, when Aziraphale was lying. He’d taken to each of them like a fish to water, sinking down into them to understand them the way they’d both thought only a demon could. Sometimes he emerged smug, and laughing; sometimes he emerged baffled, and confused. Sometimes, even, he’d been grief-stricken, heart-sore. But he’d always _known._

Hadn’t he?

Aziraphale had told lies before, yes.

But he knew, watching the lights slide over the set of Crowley’s shoulders and the thin line of Crowley’s mouth as they sped past streets and signs and villages in the growing dark, that he shouldn’t have told this one.

*

They were pulling into a public car park in Kew by the time Aziraphale properly noticed how long they’d been driving, lost as he was in the blurring lights and hazy thoughts speeding past, the reds of stoplights and open signs standing out like smears of blood in a sea of white, colourless flashes, streetlamps and headlights and vintage marquees. Crowley parked extravagantly, sprawling the Bentley over two and a half spaces, and for a moment they sat in the shadows, as if still catching their breaths.

Outside it had gone nearly eight o’clock, and the night was brightly lit and full of noise, people walking down the street, music from a pub garden filtering over the line of buildings. The stars overhead had been washed out.

“Where are we?” Aziraphale finally asked. Greater London still, he thought, but he had no idea which direction they’d gone.

“Kew. Thought we might get a bite to eat.”

“In Kew?”

Crowley opened his door and unfolded himself onto the pavement. “ _Not_ in Soho,” he said, almost under his breath. “Come on.”

There was a pub down the street a little ways, the whole traditional thing with the wood-panelled walls and tables stuffed haphazardly into darkened corners, brimming with old historical photographs and advertisements, stained glass lamps and scarred floors. It still smelled faintly of smoke, as though the smoking bans had come too late for whatever had already been settled into the walls over the years. Crowley looked over all the tables before claiming one in the very back, tucked away into a dark corner, and slinging himself into the seat with his back to the wall so he could survey the pub as they sat.

Eventually they worked their way through a couple of scotch eggs and a couple of very fine stout beers, after which Aziraphale switched to something lighter and a little citrusy and ordered the paella. There were, of course, enormous slabs of chocolate cake for dessert, and Crowley even ate his own, picking over it for an hour, an hour and a half, _two hours_.

“You don’t have to finish it if you don’t like,” Aziraphale said finally, watching Crowley choke down another sliver of a bite as guilt rose like bile in the back of his throat.

Crowley looked at his watch; the waitstaff had been looking at their own watches for the better part of the evening already. It hadn’t yet hit closing time, but it was getting quite late. “I’m just enjoying it at my own pace,” he sniped.

He didn’t look like he was enjoying it at all. “Maybe we should pack the rest to go? You can finish it with coffee back at mine.”

There was a pause, and then the heinous sound of fork tines skipping across a ceramic plate. “At yours?”

Everything about Crowley had gone suddenly quite still. He was as pale on the edges now as he’d been in that cupboard, and his dark lenses hadn’t given up so much as a half-a-percent of tinting as the night had wore on. His fingers were shaking around the fork.

Aziraphale didn’t have to feel Crowley’s heart to know it was pounding again, but he steeled himself once more and reached out, taking the silverware from Crowley’s hand and letting settling his own palm over those shaking fingers. He was ready, this time, for the thunderous roar, _babumpbabump_ , but it still made his own heart sink to hear it.

“You know,” Aziraphale said carefully, “I think I might have mistaken someone else for Gabriel. I don’t think I really saw him.”

Crowley’s heart lurched under Aziraphale’s hand. “How can you be sure?”

“I’m sure. I would have—it would have felt differently. I just got caught up in the moment, I think.” That, at least, was true.

The _babumpbabump_ slowed, almost imperceptibly. “You didn’t see him?”

Aziraphale squeezed the hand under his, offered up a gentle, apologetic smile. “I didn’t see him.”

Crowley exhaled, and sunk back into his seat, his hand slipping out from under Aziraphale’s. He took a moment to think it over, staring at the slice of half-eaten cake, and then finally seemed to gather himself. “The coffee at yours is terrible,” he said, letting a bit of his usual teasing disdain seep into his voice. “Let’s go back to mine, I can show how to work the espresso machine.”

Aziraphale snorted, instead of smiling, but he knew that Crowley understood. “By saying please and snapping my fingers?”

“I can do lattes, too,” Crowley kept on. “And if you say please to _me_ , there’s some very nice vanilla cognac in the cupboard as well, and the guest bed’s got fresh sheets on it. What do you say, angel—another slice of cake to go?”

Aziraphale considered it. The cake had been awfully rich, but there was a cherry crumble on the menu as well he’d skipped over for the promise of chocolate, and he rather thought a night in Crowley’s guest room would do more to make up for his mistake than an apology would. “Make it the crumble, and you’ve got a deal.”

Relief flooded Crowley’s face, and he finally pushed his plate away. “Crumble it is. Waiter!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Aziraphale-banned-from-casinos headcanon is, of course, [borrowed from our very own curtaincall, on tumblr @fremulon](https://fremulon.tumblr.com/post/611540406045474816/so-crowley-said-stretching-his-legs-out-and), with permission. Thank you darlin!


	4. Chapter 4

Aziraphale was going to have to do something he had not done in an age.

He’d exhausted all his options. He’d been through practically every book on his shelves and none of them had been at all helpful; he’d read all the medical texts a third time, just be sure, and his entire collection of Chestertons, though that one hadn’t exactly been on purpose, and even all of his books of prophecy, though neither Mother Shipton— _now really, Madame, he’s only an old work acquaintance—_ nor Michel Nostradame— _you’re reading too much into things, Michel—_ had had anything to say on the subject of Crowley that was at all helpful.

It was time to take matters into his own hands. He really didn’t think he had any other choice.

He was going to have to go to the library.

Libraries had always drawn Aziraphale in—the written word, meaning given to lines and spaces, the grasp of something ungraspable. Knowledge that could be confirmed, relied upon, _remembered—_ knowledge that could be protected, kept safe. _Guarded._

But eventually they’d become something else, obsessed with turning a profit, with collecting dues and subscriptions and fees. They’d turned from quiet study rooms to halls filled with chairs and sofas meant for socialising and for gathering crowds to listen to this contracted speaker or that, obsessed with gathering up antiquities and rarities only to lock them away behind schedules and waiting lists and desk chains, or otherwise with popular fiction and horribly incorrect histories and sciences that should never have seen the light of any day, much less the popular masses. And Aziraphale’s own growing collection had, in time, rather outgrown any reasonable storage options, and thus the bookshop had been born.

But the bookshop didn’t hold _all_ the information that humanity had discovered, and so Aziraphale found himself clicking into the wide entrance lobby of the Kensington Central Library at half-past ten on a Tuesday morning, feeling distinctly out of his depth.

There was a noise to this library, a hustle and bustle so different from the shop, and Aziraphale was swept along with the tide for a while, finding himself browsing stacks in adult fiction, stumbling through halls of study corrals and even, at one point, through a storytime circle with children dotting the floor as a book was read out loud. There was light, and colour, and humanity was here in all its varieties, doing the same thing they’d been doing since Eve had twisted the apple from its branch, that sunny day back in Eden: searching for information.

And now here Aziraphale was, one of them after all, and he had no idea where to look.

“Can I help you find something sir?” Aziraphale, embarrassingly, jumped, and turned to see a woman sitting behind a desk, looking at him expectantly. She smiled at him, tapping a pen on her keyboard. “It looked like you might be a bit lost. It’s easy to get turned around, when you first come in. If you could tell me what you were looking for, I could probably point you in the right direction.”

He could hardly _tell_ her, could he? _How to restart a demon heart_ was hardly likely to be a highlight of their collection. “Erm, well. Advice, I suppose.”

Her smile turned a little indulgent, a little soft, perhaps. “What sort of advice?”

“I—I have this friend, you see, and I think he’s going through a spot of trouble and I’d like very much to help—”

“Ah,” the woman said. “Relationships. That, we definitely have.” She fumbled through a few pamphlets on the corner of her desk and pulled out a map of the library, circling a section on the second floor. “Right here. I’m sure you’ll find something helpful.”

“Oh, thank you.” He took the map from her, studying the circled section closely. “Thank you very much.”

Of course, once he _got_ there, he thought perhaps she’d made a bit of a mistake. The books were all titled things like _Get the Guy_ and _Dating for Dummies_ and _It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken_. Aziraphale stared blankly at the rows, trying to decide whether it was worth going back to clarify what he’d really meant when a particular spine caught his eye: _The Physical Trauma of Emotional Healing._ It had a faded blue comforting cover, letters after the author’s name indicating some sort of higher degree, though Aziraphale had no idea which, and chapters titled things like _Your Pain is Real_ and _How to Start Using Your Heart Again_.

 _Perfect,_ Aziraphale thought, and he slid the book out of its spot and went to find somewhere to read.

He left the library several hours later, feeling strangely wrung out. He went home and made a cup of tea he did not drink and thought about Crowley, and about Heaven and Hell, and what it was like to feel _watched;_ he thought about six thousand years, reaching out and never knowing for sure if someone was reaching back.

He thought about the unnecessary, unreliable beating of his own heart, and whether Crowley’s would ever be the same again.

He thought for a long, long time.

*

When he shook himself out of the stupor a day or two later, exhausted and hungry, it was because Crowley was knocking on the windows to the shop. “Aziraphale? You in there?”

Aziraphale hurried to unlatch the door, and Crowley grinned easily on the step outside, holding a wicker hamper with one hand. “There had better not be a baby in there,” Aziraphale said faintly, staring at it.

“What? Oh, no—no, just a spot of lunch. Haven’t heard from you in a few days, and I thought—well, never mind what I thought, anyway, it’s lunch, is what it is. What do you say, angel? St James’ Park?”

Aziraphale’s stomach growled loudly, announcing itself before he could formulate any kind of response; Crowley’s grin widened. “That’s a yes, I guess,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive.”

“You always drive,” Aziraphale pointed out automatically, but the hamper was heavy with whatever Crowley had packed, and no doubt some sunshine and a few nibbles would help him get his thoughts in order.

Crowley still needed him, after all. Crowley, and his erratic, still-healing heart.

Aziraphale closed up the shop behind him, and followed after.

*

It was an unseasonably beautiful day in London. Almost _too_ unseasonably beautiful, but when Aziraphale arched a skeptical eyebrow in Crowley’s direction, Crowley merely took off across the park lawns and exclaimed something about having seen the perfect spot.

By the time Aziraphale caught up to him and his long legs, Crowley had shaken out an enormous blanket—checkered, though not actually tartan; still, it seemed like some kind of concession—and was digging out a bottle of very nice prosecco, just started to bead with condensation, and a couple of glasses.

“There’s not supposed to be glass in the park,” Aziraphale said, standing awkwardly at the edge of the blanket. He didn’t really care, of course, but he felt it should at least be pointed out for the sake of being pointed out.

Crowley shrugged. “And yet, _miraculously_ , no one will notice. Come on, angel, this is nice, I’m not drinking it out of plastic. Take a seat.”

Aziraphale did, a little gingerly—he had not been in the practice of sitting on the ground for quite some years—and watched as Crowley piled an incredibly unlikely amount of food out of the basket: pressed sandwiches thick with cheese and tomatoes and pesto, little glass jars of tortellini with garlicky herb oil and crisp green salads, fresh blackberries and white nectarines and strawberries, dishes with nuts and dishes with olives and dishes with those little cheese straws that seemed to disappear, rather addictively, as soon as one began eating them, and even what appeared to be a box of champagne truffles.

“There’s a honey-almond cake too, for the end,” Crowley said, passing one of the sandwiches into Aziraphale’s hands.

“If we ever get to the end.”

Crowley grinned, sunshine-sharp, and popped a nut into his mouth. “I have faith,” he said simply, as if that wasn’t a rather outrageous declaration for a demon to make, and started unwrapping his own sandwich.

_I have faith in you._

Aziraphale wasn’t sure he deserved all that, really. His heart clenched painfully beneath his ribs under the weight of the trust Crowley so easily placed in him, time after time, moment after moment. Even when Aziraphale had refused him, rejected him—when Aziraphale had said _it’s over,_ when Aziraphale had said _you go too fast,_ when Aziraphale had said and said and said so many things and meant none of them—Crowley had always trusted him anyway.

 _Maybe someday we could go for a picnic,_ Aziraphale had said once, in the orange-pink glow of what seemed like guaranteed destruction.

 _Anywhere,_ Crowley had promised then. _Anywhere you want to go._

It was no wonder, really, that Crowley’s heart had suffered. Aziraphale could only hope that it wasn’t too late.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said now, softly. “Suppose—I have been spending a lot of time, these last few days, thinking over everything, where things went wrong. It’s good to get out of the shop.”

“Serendipitous, then, that I came into possession of the hamper. Completely by accident, you understand.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale allowed, and they both smiled over their prosecco for a moment. “A happy accident, then.”

It was easier, then, to sit in silence, to focus on the breeze and the clouds and the passersby instead of the squeeze within Aziraphale’s own chest. To accept Crowley’s offerings as caretaking, and never think of temptations; to take Crowley’s presence as a gift, instead of in guilt.

To let his own heart beat on, for once, steady underneath his breastbone, reverberating down his fingers. _Ba-bump, ba-bump._

*

“It’s a dog.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s obviously a cat.”

“A _cat?_ What kind of cat do you know with ears like that?”

“What kind of dog do you know?”

“I know lots of dogs. All kinds of dogs, ears like that.”

Aziraphale tilted his head, wondering if it were just a matter of perspective, but no: the cloud still looked like a bloody cat. “I think you’re full of nonsense,” he told Crowley.

“Full of wine, maybe,” Crowley agreed. He sat up, searching for the bottle of prosecco again, which came up empty. He rummaged in the hamper for another. “You ready for a spot of that cake, angel?”

“Mm.” Aziraphale considered it. “You could pass me one of those truffles.”

Crowley did, looking back up at the sky. “There,” he said, sounding smug, “it’s _definitely_ a dog now.”

Aziraphale followed his gaze; the blob of a cloud they’d been debating over had, to its own very great surprise, sculpted itself into the perfect shape of a Jack Russell Terrier.

“Cheating,” he pointed out, but Crowley only laughed.

The prosecco had been a good idea. A very good idea. The truffles and fruits had been a better one. Aziraphale was warm with sunshine and full with nibbles, his heart slow and steady and easy in his chest, _ba-bump, ba-bump;_ their conversation had started with fits and bursts, but eventually settled into something smooth and familiar and a little bit silly. That was fine, though. Crowley never minded when Aziraphale was silly.

“Glass?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale sat up and found his, holding it out for another pour, and giggled. A lone little leaf had tangled intself in Crowley’s hair, just above his ear. “You’ve got a—” Aziraphale gestured.

“A what?” Crowley reached up, searching the wrong side, combing his fingers through his fringe and mussing it all up. “Where?”

“Here,” Aziraphale said, still laughing, not thinking at all, “let me—”

And he reached out, his own heart still thrumming easily in his chest, and drifted his fingers into Crowley’s hair.

It was enough.

Crowley’s heartbeat twined around Aziraphale’s fingers, traveling up his wrist. He sounded the way he’d always sounded over the ears, and Aziraphale, buoyant with bubbly and sunshine and an pervading sense of calm and relief, sighed. The leaf pulled free easily, lost once more to the wind, and his fingers were delving back into the soft short scrub of Crowley’s hair again, lingering along his temple, his cheekbones, and Crowley leaned in toward him, eyes drifting shut behind his dark lenses. There were freckles, born of the sun, most likely, dusting his nose; Aziraphale wanted to count them.

And Crowley’s heart kept beating.

It kept beating, steady, steady, _ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump_ , curling over Aziraphale’s shoulders, tapping into his chest, meeting Aziraphale’s own heartbeat—

Aziraphale sat back with a start, pulling his hand away from the bonfire of Crowley’s hair in the afternoon sun as if he’d been burnt. The beat of both hearts in his chest stuttered, as if gasping for air, and then stopped.

_Please don’t let him have heard._

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said meekly, trying for a smile, smothering his heart in his chest with both hands and _praying_ Crowley hadn’t heard it; Crowley, who knew that angels didn’t have heartbeats, who knew that Aziraphale _shouldn’t_ have one. “You’ve always had the loveliest hair, you know.”

Crowley’s eyes had opened again, that cool yellow gone strangely detached as he surveyed Aziraphale’s sudden flush, the fresh damp along his hairline. He gave Aziraphale a brief, lifeless smile.

“Careful you don’t compliment me,” he teased, without feeling. “Vanity’s a sin, you know. Thought you were supposed to be thwarting that sort of thing.”

_Please don’t let him have heard._

“I think a little truth does us some good, once in a while,” Aziraphale returned, as lightly as he could. “Credit where credit is due.”

Crowley laughed. “Yeah, a little truth,” he repeated. “’Course.” He turned away, reaching for the hamper once more; Aziraphale got the impression that he was looking _away_ , rather than looking for anything. “What do you say, angel? Time for that cake now?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began—it was wrong, of course it was wrong, Crowley must have heard, he _must have_ —but when Crowley looked up, offering him the little box with the cake it, he couldn’t think of a word to say. He took the box, ducked his head, berated himself for not keeping a better handle on himself. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem,” Crowley said, and he did, at least, sound like he meant it.

Aziraphale didn’t know what else to do. Crowley handed him a fork; he ate the cake.

*

Crowley’s heartbeat had been there, though. Aziraphale had heard it.

It had been steady, and even, and calm; it had been the heartbeat Aziraphale had been missing, the one he’d been searching for. Maybe Crowley had simply needed some time. Maybe this whole thing had been foolishness, an overreaction to a blip on the radar. It wouldn’t be the first time Aziraphale had overreacted— how many times had he been told? _No, Aziraphale, they’ll survive. No, Aziraphale, you’re worrying too much. No, Aziraphale, they just have to get through it. It’s ineffable._

He preferred Crowley’s pulse to be _steady_ , not ineffable, thank you very much.

Aziraphale just wanted to check. Just one more time.

It was Crowley who suggested they pack up and head to the bookshop, maybe get a takeaway, crack open a bottle with fewer bubbles in it. Aziraphale helped him pack up the remnants of their meal into the hamper—although he strongly suspected that it all went straight to Crowley’s crisp white refrigerator, rather than the hamper’s gingham-lined interior—and rushed to stand, leaving Crowley to finish tying the hamper closed.

And then, when Crowley was about to pull himself to his feet, Aziraphale jumped in. “Oh, here,” he said, with as much nonchalance as he could manage, and he shoved a hand in his face, palm up, fingers extended. This time, he made very, _very_ sure that his own heart was turned to the emphatically _off_ position.

Crowley stared at it. “What’s that for?”

“I’m helping you up.”

Crowley stared at it some more, and then he stared up at Aziraphale, and then he blinked and the moment passed and he grabbed hold of Aziraphale’s hand like it was nothing. “Hand up for a demon?” he laughed, unfolding himself to his feet. “Seems a bit on-point, even for you, don’t you think?”

The heartbeat in Crowley’s hand went _ba-bump, ba-bump. Ba-bump._ He looked at Aziraphale. _Ba-bump_. Aziraphale looked back. _Ba—bump. Ba—ba—bump._

And it stopped.

“All right?” Crowley said, quietly, significantly.

No, it was not all right. Crowley’s hand was still, and silent, and deafening, and Crowley was looking at Aziraphale expectantly through his glasses as if he _knew it,_ and it was the very opposite thing of _all bloody right._

“All right,” Aziraphale said faintly, and Crowley let go.

*

It had been there. Crowley’s heartbeat.

It had, Aziraphale had heard it. That fierce _ba-bump, ba-bump_ of Crowley’s heart, thumping beneath his skin, beating strong and healthy and _beautiful_.

Aziraphale had heard it and he had felt it and it had been there.

And then Crowley’s eyes had found Aziraphale’s, calm and deliberate and intentional, and it had stopped.

Like Crowley had just turned it off, had just reached inside and twisted the spigot of his own pulse until it ran dry. Like he had known what his heart was doing, and he’d wanted it not to be doing it anymore.

The way Aziraphale stopped his own, sometimes.

The way Aziraphale sometimes stopped his own when he was worried someone might overhear it, when he reported to Heaven, when he went into churches. The way he’d stopped it when he’d stepped into the third alternative rendezvous, so horrifyingly aware that they shouldn’t have had a first rendezvous, much less a handful of alternatives, choking on _should_ and _shouldn’t_ and _we’re on opposite sides._

The way he’d stopped it right before he’d taken Crowley’s hand the night the world hadn’t ended to switch corporations, leaving Crowley alone in the silence of his chest cavity.

The way Aziraphale stopped his own right before he’d taken Crowley’s hand in the brilliant afternoon sunshine, praying Crowley wouldn’t hear.

He’d thought—and what a _foolish_ thing to think—that Crowley’s heart had beat all the time.

That Crowley’s heart was no more than a functional piece of him, the clock in Crowley’s chest, keeping time through no more than an automatic process. That Crowley was a casualty of his own corporation, subject to its whims like any human, when he was made from the same exact stuff that Aziraphale was made from.

Crowley was a demon, yellow-eyed and loose-jointed, but he’d been made an angel, and he wasn’t so different than he’d been. Not so different as Heaven and Hell had declared he was.

Not so different as Aziraphale had believed.

They went back to the bookshop together, subdued and quiet. Crowley ordered a Chinese delivered, and they’d eaten quietly, the good cheer of the afternoon lost somewhere between the gates at St James’ and the egg rolls spread out on the coffee table in Aziraphale’s back room.

“Think I’m for an early night,” Crowley said, when Aziraphale put his chopsticks down. “Lots of things to get up to tomorrow, and I want to make an early start.”

“Oh. Busy day?”

“Just some mischief down the Tube, don’t you worry, angel.”

Aziraphale smiled, small and maybe a little too tremulous. “I never do.”

Once he was gone, Aziraphale locked up, poured himself a glass of brandy, sat in the armchair in the back room. The shop seemed full up of Crowley, full up of the sound of his laughter and his mischief, evenings spent in the bottom of a bottle of wine and rifling through the stacks, full up of his ramblings and his arguments and his craftiness and his patience. His years and years of patience, of waiting, of letting his heart beat and beat and beat without end, saying everything he’d never put to words.

And now, after all this time, Crowley’s heart had stopped.

Crowley had _wanted it to_.

Aziraphale had been so worried that Crowley’s heart had been hurt somehow, that it had been broken by their corporation switch or by the trip to Hell or by the holy water bath. He’d been so worried about it changing, desperate for it to remain the same, for it to count out those reliable beats of their lives. He’d wanted that beat to count out forever for them, to set the pace and the tone and the step of their lives _together_.

He hadn’t realised what it cost Crowley, though. He hadn’t realised that those beats had not come free.

Crowley’s heart _had_ been broken, and Aziraphale—

Aziraphale, with the beat of his own heart crushed beneath his hands, silenced in every moment it wanted to speak, ignored and dismissed and restrained for _centuries—_

Aziraphale, with nothing but empty, echoing hollows in his chest and silent, still secrets in his hands, locked away from every moment Crowley might have heard, might have known, might have been less alone, might have had _someone_ on his side _—_

 _Aziraphale_ had been the one to break it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end! It's been such a great ride and I am so entirely grateful to Claire @doorwaytoparadise for their incredible art, which LEGIT had my jaw on the floor this chapter, so I hope you all enjoy it too! 
> 
> The third piece of art in this chapter is NSFW, so be mindful if you are scrolling publicly. 
> 
> If you would like to skip the E-rated section of this chapter, it begins just after the second piece of art and goes through to the next section break. <3

Aziraphale’s heart had been a fickle thing for centuries.

_ Unreliable _ , Aziraphale had thought it was. Prone to acting out, to startling itself, to jumping in with unexpected, syncopated rhythms where there should have been none at all, a schoolchild that couldn’t keep from speaking out of turn. It should never have given so much as a single hiccup, and each one after the first was a betrayal of his self-control—his heart worked, after all, on miracles, no more than a gear in a machine to be flipped on and off like a light on a switch.

But not all miracles are created equal; not all miracles are pushed into the world with a rush of power and faith and holy trumpets.

Some miracles simply find a spot—a moment, a feeling, a glance across the room—and grow _. _

Aziraphale stood in the middle of the bookshop, gazing over the well-loved spines, over this catalogue of stories humanity had thought worth writing down.  _ Sense and Sensibility  _ and  _ Rebecca _ ,  _ Frankenstein  _ and  _ The Haunting of Hill House, _ threaded through everything Shakespeare had jotted down—the Benedicks and Beatrices, yes, but also the Romeos and Juliets, the Hamlets and Horatios. Tenderness made sharp with comedy; tragedy made sharp in tenderness.

It was all about love.

He turned away from the stacks and sat, trembling, in his usual chair; across the coffee table was the sofa, the blankets still mussed from when Crowley had last sprawled across it. There would be a faint smell of smoke there, if Aziraphale leaned in close, and Crowley had left a hair tie some six months ago, before he’d cut his hair short again, in the little candy dish that usually held an assortment of hard caramels and spare pocket change.

_ This _ , Aziraphale thought, staring at that hair tie, feeling his heart clench and start, a low rumbling in his chest, like it was taking its first unimpeded steps in six thousand years,  _ this is love. _

And he sat, and for a long, long time, for the very  _ first _ time, he simply—felt it.

_ This is love. _

It was a strange feeling, and privately Aziraphale was a bit disappointed that so much of humanity had tried to write about it and never managed to tip him off to what it was to actually  _ feel _ it. They had written  _ so much _ , about soaring heights and blazing fires, about gentle smiles and stoic agreements and silly giggles, about fainting and running and laughing and touching—quite a lot about touching—and none of them had ever really captured it.

_ This is love. _

It felt: warm.

It felt:  _ familiar.  _ As if he had stepped out of a rain shower and into a tea shop, humid with heat and steam; as if he had been walking a little too long in the afternoon, turning pink with effort and sunshine. And yes, it did feel like soaring heights and blazing fires and running and laughing and all the things, all the little things humanity had written about—but mostly it felt like wanting, and needing, and reaching out, desperate for someone to reach back.

For  _ Crowley _ to reach back.

For Crowley to be there, with him; for it to be his laughter and his smile and his yellow eyes, crinkled at the corners in delight. For Crowley to sprawl across his sofa, and infuse his scent of smoke and spice into the bookshop, and for him to make fun of Aziraphale for fussing over customers and delivery menus, and to lean back against the cushions with a quiet sort of happiness in his eyes as he poked and teased and debated long into the night.

For Crowley to know what this felt like, flooding out of Aziraphale’s chest, pooling in his throat, his hands, the insides of his elbows. For him to know that Aziraphale’s heart beat in time to the rhythm Crowley’s had been setting since the very beginning; for him to know that Aziraphale had heard it, and felt it too.

_ This is love. _

He remembered the deliberate, awful slowing of Crowley’s heart under his own hand, and only hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

*

Aziraphale didn’t make a plan.

He and Crowley had been friends for millenia without a plan—chance meetings, coincidental assignments,  _ you’re lucky I was in the area— _ and anyway, Aziraphale had had enough of plans, Great or Ineffable or otherwise. He was just going to—to turn on his heart, and listen to it. To trust himself.

To trust Crowley.

It had been deafening at first, to keep that pulse inside his chest, but it was, unexpectedly, a comfort to carry. A reminder that felt like something blooming, brilliant and fragrant and tinged in shadow, inside him. Like a rose, soft in the dark. Like a second chance. 

Then he rang up Crowley, who answered as if nothing had ever happened, and asked if he had any interest in a bottle of 2006 Spanish white.

“Chinese with that?” Crowley asked, with a grin evident in his voice, “or should we go a bit more traditional and wipe out someone’s tapas menu?”

Aziraphale wondered if Crowley could hear the jump of his heart down the line—at the ease of it, at the chance of it. He’d been too patient, Crowley had. Too good. He’d always been. 

“Whatever you fancy,” Aziraphale answered, perhaps a bit more softly than was really called for.

“Could go for some of that cheese thing they do,” Crowley was going on. “Chorizo, too. Some of that octopus thing, with the sauce you like?” He was making noise in the background, like he was shouldering into a coat, searching for his keys. “I know a place that does a chocolate and pistachio cake too.”

“If you like.”

“Give me—forty-five minutes, I think, to be safe?”

Aziraphale laughed at that, affection tight in his throat. “You’re never safe.”

“No,” Crowley agreed, laughing too, “but it’s better if I’m not and say I am. Skips the fussing that way.”

“You’re incorrigible, and I’m  _ not _ fussy.”

“Course not,” Crowley said, pleased with the obvious lie of it, and he swept in a mere half-hour later, laden with takeaway boxes and complaining about the traffic on Shaftesbury Avenue. 

“See?” he said once he’d set everything down, holding out his arms and showing himself off. “Safe as houses, and fifteen minutes early, too.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, heart rumbling with exasperation even as it was charmed, and went to pour the wine.

*

The evening meandered for a while, and Aziraphale let it. Let his heart beat and let the jokes land and let the time slip by, the same way it had a thousand nights before. They settled into their usual seats and made good work of the takeaway, puttering around their glasses and wandering through a rather domestic conversation, and it was easy and it was simple and it was content.

Aziraphale’s heart beat on.

He liked spending time with Crowley. Always had, even when he hadn’t meant to. He was bitingly funny and surprisingly sweet and sometimes, just to see if he could get away with it, slyly tempting, and he made Aziraphale feel warm and comfortable even when Aziraphale’s heart sat still, but now—with a pulse moving in Aziraphale’s body like an electrical current, murmuring in a quiet ebb and flow,  _ love, love, love, love— _ he felt  _ settled _ in a way he hadn’t realised had needed settling. 

It was as if the bookshop had shifted around him, had tilted three or four degrees to finally lock into place. As if he’d been waiting, without knowing what he was waiting for, and now it had finally arrived.

Eventually, warm-cheeked and hazy, Aziraphale got up to do some shelving, just as he would on any other night. Crowley pulled out a crossword, which he was filling out rather arrogantly with a pen—though it was easier, after all, when one could simply rearrange the boxes to suit one’s mistakes. Aziraphale swung back around every so often to sip at the wine and badger Crowley over fourteen down, which ought to have read  _ Rick  _ and currently read something entirely else, and the night grew deep and the beat in Aziraphale’s chest kept rolling steadily on.

When the books were done—or, as done as Aziraphale felt they needed to be, which was not really done at all—he hung back in the shadows of the stacks for a moment, watching Crowley through the gap between a horror novella and a three-volume romance. He looked so  _ effortlessly there _ , sprawled out on the sofa; he looked like he belonged. Like he wanted to belong.

Aziraphale wondered if his heart was beating too, just then.

If his heart would ever beat again.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, stepping out from behind the shelf. “Come here?”

“Mm?” Crowley looked up, his yellow eyes brilliant in the low light of the shop. “All right, angel?”

“I want to try something,” Aziraphale said. The idea was coalescing even as he spoke; it made him stiff, settling hard in his shoulders, in his wrists, but he stood his ground against the instinct to step back. “Would you—?”

Crowley watched him another moment, squinting at him as if he could read Aziraphale’s intentions in his fidgeting hands, but ultimately he did set aside the crossword and unfold from the sofa, stepping forward with his hands shoved into his pockets. “What’s this, then?”

He was lovely in the dim lights like this: the warmth of the lamps on his cheekbones, the hesitant curl of his lips, ready to snarl or smile in turn. Standing half in the shadows, cool blues and violets catching in the curve of his neck, the fall of his hair, Crowley was every inch the demon, and every inch of him was loved.

Aziraphale wanted to touch him.

Not to investigate or pry; not to listen in on whatever secrets Crowley held inside. Just to touch—to know his boundaries, how he moved, how he  _ felt _ . To know him the way humans know each other, as intimate as it is mysterious.

The ancient gramophone crackled to life in a swell of strings, and Aziraphale hushed his own heart in his chest once more, less a secret being kept now than a confession not quite ready to be made. He took a deep breath and held out his hand, lapsing into formality as if that might protect him.

“May I have this dance?”

Whatever Crowley was expecting, it clearly wasn’t that. “I thought angels didn’t dance,” he said, eyebrows raised. “By definition.”

Aziraphale met his gaze, and did not flinch. “I don’t really think I’m that sort of angel anymore.”

The record on the gramphone was some kind of slow, wandering orchestral thing, the sort of movement that would probably be called  _ Prelude _ or  _ Nocturne _ , Aziraphale couldn’t remember. It wasn’t really meant to be danced to; it was the sort of the thing Aziraphale would normally pop on to nurse a cup of cocoa and a good book, a gentle harmony to enjoy with a rainfall and slow afternoon. He didn’t really know the kind of music people danced to. He’d never danced the kind of dance he wants to dance now: a slow, wandering thing, without rigidity, without prescribed steps. A dance intended just to hold someone close and sway with them a moment. 

“I’ve actually only ever seen this done on telly,” Aziraphale said quickly, his offered hand gesturing off in some flutter of nerves. A wild vine of adrenalin and anxiety had taken root in his belly; he huffed out a short, self-deprecating laugh. “You may want some demonic intervention to protect your toes.”

Crowley didn’t laugh with him; instead he reached out and anchored Aziraphale’s hand in his. “I’ve seen it done a few times,” he said, though he didn’t say where. “Looked nice enough.” They both looked down at their hands, twined together. “Not really my thing—nice.” 

“Come on,” Aziraphale teased, hoping he wouldn’t pull away. “I’m sure you won’t be  _ that _ bad at it.”

Crowley’s hand was cool in Aziraphale’s. His skin was silent, static.

“Fine,” he finally capitulated, with a grin that makes them both feel better. “But this is a one-night only deal, all right? Don’t go spreading rumours or anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Aziraphale promised wryly, and then he stepped in close and all the air went out of the room.

One of them had to put a hand on a waist. One of them had to reach out, and place a palm against the curve of a body.

There was a bit of fumbling as they tried to figure it out, but in the end it was Crowley’s palm, skating over Aziraphale’s waist to his hip. Aziraphale was glad of it; now that he was here, he wasn’t sure he would have had the courage to hold Crowley this way, this closely. It was easier to rest his spare hand on Crowley’s shoulder, should he need to snatch it back.

“It’s okay,” Crowley told him softly, and then they began to move.

It was—clumsy. Aziraphale found the beat in the music and then immediately lost it again, their feet tangling together as they tried to shift back and forth. Unlike the gavotte, where Aziraphale could often rely on being caught up in the flow of everyone around him, there was nothing here to guide him except the equally awkward, if slightly more confident, direction Crowley was trying to lean into.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale managed, the second time he stood on Crowley’s foot. “Her Grace doesn’t extend to the dance floor, I suppose.”

Crowley stopped them, rearranging Aziraphale’s hand on his shoulder to be slightly higher, stepping in slightly closer. “I don’t think we’re supposed to really  _ step _ -step, you know? Just sort of sway.”

“Sway,” Aziraphale repeated doubtfully. Was he supposed to be leading with his hips or his chest? Crowley shifted left just as Aziraphale shifted right; they each huffed a laugh and tried again.

Angels didn’t dance. That was a known fact, an immutable truth: angels didn’t have whatever instinctual thing made humans want to move and shimmy and shake. Their hips were made stiff and solid; their feet were made to only march.

But angels also didn’t have heartbeats. 

Aziraphale suddenly wondered if that’s what was missing in angelic stock, to leave them standing still on the sidelines of the chorus.

If it was, like so many other things, as simple and significant as a pulse.

Crowley was concentrating hard on the blundering little shuffle they’d settled into, his brow furrowed as he watched their feet stumble back and forth on the rug. His hand was solid on Aziraphale’s waist, and Aziraphale could feel him pressing lightly as he got a feel for what it was to lead; his other hand, still clasped to Aziraphale’s, was a little sweaty, and entirely still.

Aziraphale closed his eyes, listening to the music, and thought about Crowley’s heartbeat. He didn’t need to hear it to remember it—it was too well-worn in Aziraphale’s mind, too well-tattooed against his ribs. Aziraphale thought about the steady metronome of it, measuring out the beats of their lives as they moved closer and closer, circling one another.

Dancing to a tune of their own making.

It wasn’t like flipping a switch this time; there was no suckerpunch of surprise. Instead of turning his heart from off to on, Aziraphale just let it  _ begin _ , letting each pulse slip through low and slow, drifting one after another so cautiously they could almost be denied.

He had never had a heartbeat while touching Crowley before. He wondered if Crowley could hear it.

The rhythm of it grew, like water trickling into a stream, and Aziraphale let the beat of it flow down through him. The beat of the music seemed to echo through him, following after that little electrical cadence, and it was suddenly  _ easier _ to move—easier to understand  _ when _ and  _ how far, _ easier to anticipate the  _ here  _ and  _ now there _ .

Easier to understand the movements of Crowley’s body; easier to move  _ with,  _ rather than  _ against _ .

The little moue of concentration of Crowley’s face began to resolve into a self-satisfied little smile as he watched their shuffling steps turn smooth together, apparently pleased at having conquered this most human of instincts. The sight of it made Aziraphale’s heart surge, reaching out as if it could curl around him, hold him close. As if it could  _ keep _ him, if only it could be heard.

Aziraphale loved him.

He held his breath, and let his pulse flow down to Crowley’s palms.

Crowley deserved to know this part of him, after all this time. Even if Crowley’s heart stood still in his chest until it turned to stone, he deserved to know that Aziraphale’s would beat for him. Aziraphale stepped in close, and let everything go: the rhythm, the meter, the deliberate measure of love. Hand to hand. Chest to chest. Heart to heart.

And then: an answering beat.

It was faint at first, and slow, so far apart Aziraphale thought he might be imagining it. But it kept on, and their shuffling steps kept going, back and forth, back and forth, and finally Aziraphale saw Crowley’s eyes drift close.

They could have stood there like this for an eternity, waiting for something to happen: for the music to end, for their steps to falter, for the steady twin beats of their hearts to fall out of time.

Aziraphale thought maybe they’d waited long enough.

“I love the sound of your heart,” Aziraphale confessed quietly, tightening his hand around Crowley’s. “Always have.”

“Haven’t got one,” Crowley said instantly, and that was right—the beat had stopped.

“You do,” Aziraphale said, and then Crowley was stepping away, trying to detangle his hand. Aziraphale caught it back and hung on. “I didn’t realise what it meant, actually. For the longest time, I thought it was just part of you, but it’s not.”

Crowley tugged at his hand again, looking away. “It doesn’t  _ mean  _ anything. It’s just a bloody organ, it’s nothing.”

“I think it  _ is  _ something. I think your heartbeat—” Aziraphale reached for Crowley’s other hand as well, holding them both and pushing his heartbeat down through Crowley’s skin, evident and undeniable, rising into a rolling thunder— “means the same thing  _ my  _ heartbeat does.”

Crowley snorted, teeth showing in his mouth. “Means you’re a bloody fool, if anything—”

“It means,” Aziraphale said, quiet and firm, “that I love you.”

There was silence. Crowley’s hands went limp in Aziraphale’s; he stopped fighting, stopped pulling. Stood there in Aziraphale’s hold, entirely too still, eyes unblinking.

“I love you,” Aziraphale said again, and Crowley’s heartbeat was a soft, fluttering thing in his hands again, uncertain of itself. “I love you.”

Crowley swallowed hard, his mouth moving soundlessly for a moment, hands flexing in Aziraphale’s. “I think you’re probably reading too much into this, angel,” he finally said. “This is Earth. Heartbeats are a dime a dozen around here.”

Aziraphale hummed softly, and lifted the fingers of Crowley’s hand to his mouth, kissing them gently, before pressing Crowley’s palm flat against his chest, right over the shield of his breastbone, right over that unlikely drumming,  _ ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump _ . He could feel his heart pick up a little, swelling under Crowley’s hand as if trying to rise to meet it, faster, faster.

“ _ Angel _ ,” Aziraphale repeated, reminding. “Angels don’t have heartbeats. You know that. It took me too long to realise what it meant, I know—for ages I thought it was something—something—”

“Something  _ wrong _ ,” Crowley finished. He looked up at him, eyes sharp and suspicious. “You thought there was something wrong with you. You hid it.”

“I hid it,” Aziraphale said. He smiled, a small, regretful thing, but Crowley still didn’t lift away his hand, and hope bloomed like gooseflesh on Aziraphale’s skin. “I thought I was accidentally performing miracles, actually.”

Another snort slipped past Crowley’s scepticism, and his hand eased against Aziraphale’s chest, relaxing into a soft, warm weight, fingers curling around one of his lapels. “They always did say you used too many frivolous miracles.”

“The vast majority of those barely even counted as miracles,” Aziraphale said shortly. “They were entirely too nosy about the whole thing; you’d think they’d have better things to do, really.”

“So how do you know it’s not just a miracle now?”

Aziraphale laughed; he couldn’t help it. “It is, I think,” he said, stepping closer again, raising his hand to Crowley’s cheek. The answering  _ ba-bump, ba-bump _ of his pulse was fast and furious under his skin, careening toward something uncontrolled, and Aziraphale wanted to soothe it, to comfort it, to ease it into resting with the knowledge that it would never be alone again. “Of a kind. Not anything to do with Her, just—just like the stars, or the rain, or electricity. A state of the natural world, but also—something wonderful, and, and breathtaking, and  _ terrifying _ , and entirely worth every moment of it.”

Crowley was so close now that Aziraphale could see every line of his face, every lash on his eyes, familiar and worn and struggling against a grin he wasn’t quite ready to give into. “That’s not a miracle,” he said, shifting ever slightly closer, and closer. “That’s just  _ you _ .”

“Don’t be a smart-arse while I’m trying to be in love with you,” Aziraphale scolded, joy bubbling up between them, and Crowley laughed, and there was nothing else for it.

Aziraphale kissed him.

The sound of Crowley’s heart was like a wave, crashing over him, pouring through him, sweeping up his own heart and echoing around it, building to it, strengthening until the two sounds were twined together, indistinguishable. Like a tsunami, drowning every other thought out, crushing them together until they were lost in the crescendo.

_ Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump _ .

*

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale kissed him, kissed him, was kissing him. He tasted like cinnamon and whisky, he smelled like fire-smoke and the warm patchouli notes, like wet earth, like green things. Aziraphale kissed him, held his jaw in his hands and kissed him, found the curl of his hair just starting at the nape of his neck and kissed him.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, gasping.  _ Ba-bump, ba-bump. _

He’d always thought Crowley was made of angles, jumbled together like triangles connected by sinew and stubbornness, but there were planes and curves to him too, soft spaces in his cheeks and along his neck, sensitive and vulnerable. Aziraphale kissed him, discovered the jut of a hip, the stretch of a waist, the ladder of ribs.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said again, but he was kissing Aziraphale back before Aziraphale could pull away to ask, clutching at Aziraphale’s lapels, curling a hand over the back of his neck, pressing himself flush against Aziraphale’s body. He had  _ thighs:  _ a revelation in denim. “Angel, angel, angel.”

_ Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. _

“Crowley,” Aziraphale finally answered, dipping down to taste the skin of his jaw, the notch at the base of his neck. His pulse was louder here, thicker somehow. “Are you all right?”

Crowley laughed, and Aziraphale felt it in his own chest. “I’m—good,” he said, breathing hard. “Bit surprised, that’s all.”

“Too fast?” Aziraphale stepped back, putting more space between them, but Crowley closed it again, pressed them close together once more. He had a  _ chest _ , heaving and full of echoing noise,  _ ba-bump, ba-bump _ : devastatingly intimate, even standing in the middle of the shop, lights low and the gramophone still warbling on in the background.

“It’s been six thousand bloody years,” Crowley said fiercely, hooking his fingers up under Aziraphale’s waistcoat. “I don’t think you could be too fast if you were racing the damn Grand Prix.”

“If you’re certain,” Aziraphale laughed. “Or we could go back to the wine and chocolate pistachio cake, if you prefer. Leave this for another night.”

“I don’t prefer at all,” Crowley said, and then he was kissing Aziraphale again, deep and delicious and achingly determined, and Aziraphale felt like he was catching Crowley mid-fall to kiss him back.

Or maybe it was Crowley catching  _ him _ ; maybe it was them catching each other. Two nightingales together, soaring into flight.

But it still made something in Aziraphale want to slow, to take his time. He wanted to  _ know  _ Crowley, to  _ explore _ Crowley, to know how he moved and how he breathed and how he  _ felt.  _ How every beat of that heart, strong and true, could ricochet through both their bodies and bring them into  _ sync _ .

_ Ba-bump, ba-bump. Ba-bump, ba-bump. _

Crowley cupped Aziraphale’s face in both hands as he kissed him, those long fingers holding him like something fragile before sliding down to his collar, to pull at an end of the bow tie and slip it away. “Okay?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale tugged at the fiddly little scarf around Crowley’s neck in turn. “Okay?”

“Anything you want, angel.”

Aziraphale wanted everything, and Crowley was true to his word: he helped Aziraphale shed their jackets, their waistcoats, undoing buttons here and there to find smooth skin and soft crinkly hair. Aziraphale went slow, cautious, gentle—ready, at any moment, to step away, to slide back, to put that millenia-old breathing room back between them—and Crowley must have felt it, must have understood it, because he touched Aziraphale with barely more than fingertips and hesitated at every new button, at every new bit of unveiled flesh, waiting for Aziraphale to breathe  _ yes _ against his mouth. 

_ Yes _ ,  _ yes, yes, yes, yes _ , until the shop rang with it like a bell, until the spines of all the books had rearranged to shout it back.  _ Yes, yes yes yes  _ yes. 

Crowley was lovely and familiar, and new and exciting and beautiful and  _ alive _ , and every secret spot of him resounded with that heartbeat, that  _ ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, _ quickening under Aziraphale’s lips, under his tongue, under his hands as he explored shoulders, ribs, the soft, unlikely divot of a navel Crowley hadn’t had the last time Airaphale had seen this part of him, sometime around the end of the Roman Empire. He leaned into certain touches and shied away from others,  _ ticklish _ of all things, and Aziraphale loved him, and loved him, and loved him.

“Come here,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale said, “Yes,” and followed him down onto the sofa, followed him down to that cocoon of blankets and pillows that Crowley had been amassing for himself for decades, and everything was heat and friction and scented like fire-toasted apples, and when Aziraphale settled his weight down and against there was a hard line of  _ want _ in the cradle of Crowley’s hips to match Aziraphale’s own.

Aziraphale stopped, looking down at Crowley’s flushed face, at his half-lidded eyes, and drew a hand down his bare torso to the band of those ridiculous jeans. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Crowley answered, and there was another button to give and more sensitive skin to find and Crowley’s heartbeat was brilliant here, thundering, rolling along with Crowley’s hips up into Aziraphale’s careful hand, “yes, yes, yes  _ yesss,”  _ as he slipped inside to find the hot satin skin of Crowley’s cock.

_ Yes, yes yes. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. _

It was clumsy, a bit, and awkward and blundering and Aziraphale felt a little like he had nothing but thumbs to give, but Crowley’’s chest heaved anyway and his hips wrestled up into Aziraphale’s hand, his belly trembling, hands scrabbling at Aziraphale’s trousers too, and that was beautiful all on its own, that was  _ perfect _ . Crowley’s cock was a hard, desperate thing, and Crowley’s hands were hot and searching and his mouth was wet and wanting, and it didn’t matter that their trousers were in the way or that there wasn’t quite room enough on the sofa because they were  _ here _ and this was  _ theirs _ and it was  _ wonderful _ .

“Here,” Aziraphale managed, abandoning Crowley’s cock for a moment to help with the zip on his trousers, shoving the fabric down his thighs, and then Crowley’s long, beautiful fingers were finding and stroking, both soft but firm, making Aziraphale’s hips jerk and drive down, aching and wanting,  _ ba-bump, ba-bump _ .

“S’good?” Crowley’s eyes were blown wide, watching Aziraphale’s face, watching the slick head of Aziraphale’s cock disappearing into his hand. “Angel, is it good?”

“It’s good, you’re so good, come here,” and Aziraphale bent to kiss him, to taste that gasping smile, biting gently on Crowley’s bottom lip to make him groan. “Come here, come here, come here.”

Someone snapped—it could have been Aziraphale, or it could have been Crowley himself; Aziraphale didn’t know and wouldn’t and it didn’t matter anyway—and Crowley’s trousers went back to the ether they’d been made from, Aziraphale’s banished to fold tidily on the coffee table, and instantly Crowley’s thighs were around Aziraphale’s hips, catching him close and drawing him in, while his hands fluttered, overwhelmed, at Aziraphale’s chest, his waist, his ribs and his nipples and his collarbones, that sensitive line of hair leading down, the flesh of his arse.

Their cocks slid together, slick and needy, and Aziraphale slipped a hand between them to take hold of them both and guide them forward.

“Yess,” Crowley hissed, “ _ Aziraphale _ .”

“I love you,” Aziraphale said, thrusting carefully against him, because the heat was building in his belly and the tension was  _ so tight _ in his thighs and hips and spine and he felt like he was breaking apart, like he was going to shatter into stardust, electric and wild, and he wanted to say it before he couldn’t say anything anymore, he wanted to say it in case it was the last thing he ever said, “ _ I love you _ .”

Crowley looked up at him, and took his face in both his hands, and kissed him.

The sound of their heartbeats filled the air, the insistent rhythm, the relentless pulse,  _ ba-bump, ba-bump,  _ and Aziraphale had wanted to take it slow but Crowley was here and he was making a  _ noise _ in his throat like a wail he was trying to bite down on, and his heart was  _ strong _ , his heart was so strong Aziraphale could feel it in his breath, in his eyes, in his cock, so strong it made Aziraphale’s knees and elbows weak and shaky, floundering in the wake of every rolling pulse, every rolling push of hips and thighs and mouths,  _ ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump,  _ and Aziraphale could feel his need, in his hand, in his hips, in his own answering heart, calling out and out and out and  _ knowing _ , for the first time, that Crowley was  _ calling back, babumpbabumpbabumpbabumpbabump— _

Then the noise in Crowley’s throat finally burst forth—he suddenly curled himself in,  _ hard _ , slamming his forehead into Aziraphale’s temple, pulling Aziraphale in as his fingers dug in and his muscles clenched and his limbs coiled like he was trying to  _ keep  _ Aziraphale, like he wouldn’t  _ ever  _ let go _ — _

And then Crowley thrust one more time into Aziraphale’s hand, and  _ shook  _ apart.

Aziraphale stroked him through it, slowing and gentling as the shuddering slowed and gentled itself, and then Crowley fell back to the arm of the sofa and batted his hand away. “You, now,” he slurred, sliding inelegant fingers back down between them to find where Aziraphale was still straining. “Come on, you now.”

“Here,” Aziraphale said, covering Crowley’s hand with his own, guiding him over his hot skin, the two of them slick with Crowley’s come. Seeing their hands together around himself was a lightning bolt, and instantly Aziraphale was back on the threshold. “Like this, like this, like this—”

Crowley wasn’t suave about it, sweating and heavy-fingered, but his pulse was still strong and beautiful and open,  _ babumpbabumpbabump,  _ and there it was: a rush, a sudden flood of light and heat and  _ wanting  _ and  _ having  _ and  _ knowing _ , and Crowley was watching him, wanting him,  _ calling  _ for him, and Aziraphale  _ answered,  _ heart and body and  _ love _ reaching out, _ babumpbabumpbabumpbabump— _

And he tipped over the edge after Crowley.

It wasn’t like shattering apart at all, he thought distantly. It was like  _ coming alive. _

“Oh,” he said, when he could speak again. He had collapsed against Crowley’s chest, sticky and overwarm, and it was fine, it was brilliant, actually, it was perfect. Crowley had wrapped his arms around him, holding him while he came back to himself. “Oh.”

Crowley laughed, shaking lightly underneath him. “Yeah,  _ oh.” _

“Hush, you,” Aziraphale said, grinning, and he lifted his head to kiss Crowley once more, soft and impossibly gentle. Crowley hushed.

_ Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. _

*

Aziraphale was listening.

He’d sat here many nights through the years, listening, and over the years the sounds of the bookshop had changed: from horse hooves to car engines, from late-night parties to farmers’ markets. There had been plenty of noise in the shop, since Aziraphale had settled in it. Plenty to be going on with.

There had also been plenty of silences.

They had haunted Aziraphale through the stacks, into the nights: silences so deep and dark they felt like they would never end, like he would smother under the blanket of it, or else drink it like poison in between his cups of tea. Silence had always settled into the corners of the shop, in between the songs and sets in the disco next door, in between laughter and shouts on the street, in between the fires burning out and the furnaces ticking on; between the tick of the clock and the turning of pages, between the telling of one story and the next—in between one year and another, marking out all the moments and the minutes and the hours Aziraphale had been alone.

The bookshop wasn’t silent now.

Quiet: yes.  _ Hushed _ , even.

But Crowley was laid against Aziraphale’s chest, and his breath was deep and even but still there, fanning out over Aziraphale’s skin. His eyes were closed, fingers curled loosely where they rested over Aziraphale’s sternum, but he wasn’t sleeping; his bare legs rasped against Aziraphale’s as one foot absently swept back and forth, rocking them both into comfort.

And Crowley’s heart was beating.

Aziraphale’s was too.

The sound was slow and steady, pulsing through the bookshop and weaving through the stacks, rising up to echo around the oculus and then settling again into the rugs like dust. It sent its familiar beats into all the shadows of the shop, driving out the silences from their hiding places and dissipating them like so much smoke, the weight of years and years alone disappearing under the warm relentless promise of the call and the response:  _ ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. _

Aziraphale knew that whatever else happened now, the bookshop would never be truly silent again.

Crowley shifted against him, resettling more firmly into the space between his chest and his arm, between his body and the back of the sofa. Their skin stuck together, just a little, where they’d been pressed close; Aziraphale adjusted his arm over Crowley’s back, cradling him a little more firmly to him, and felt him exhale with something like relief.

“All right?” Aziraphale asked.

“Mm.” Crowley blinked those yellow eyes open, darkened almost to the flickering orange of a flame in the low lights of the shop. He looked at Aziraphale like he was trying to memorise the sight of him; his fingers started to tap against Aziraphale’s chest in that same slow, steady rhythm, counting out the beats that he could no doubt hear under Aziraphale’s ribs.

“Me too, you know,” he said. “I—what you said. Me too.”

Aziraphale looked down at him, at the question written in his eyes— _ do you hear me?— _ and stretched to kiss him, feeling that familiar rhythm as it soared through him, meeting Aziraphale’s own rhythm and twining around it, a harmony producing a chord, a motif. A song.

“I know,” he answered.

Their hearts beat as one. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find us on tumblr [@forineffablereasons](http://forineffablereasons.tumblr.com) and [@sungmee](http://sungmee.tumblr.com)!


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